Categories

Filters

Reader's Special Deal

Owning the paper editition of the HDRI Handbook 2.0 qualifes you for awesome rebates! $350 total savings are waiting! Just answer this simple trivia question:

This page is a directory to all kinds of software with HDR capabilities.
Programs are grouped by common tasks and sorted alphabetically. Check the HDRI Handbook 2.0 for more detailed reviews. The book also explains the most interesting programs in practical tutorials. The rating on this page, however, is based on popularity. Flip the switch to add your vote (only one flip per day).

Download Page

Popular Vote

Viewer and Thumbnail Browsers

Thumbnail browser specifically made for HDR images. Supports all standard HDR formats: can create, analyze, calibrate, crop, rotate and resize HDRIs. Also some basic tonemapping capabilities. Downside: Not very fast and rather unstable with large images.

Windows extension for system-wide support of OpenEXR files, Radiance HDR, and a flurry of RAW formats. they show up as thumbnails in Explorer and every Microsoft program can display these images. This codec pack is essential for working with HDR files in Windows.

15% OFF

HDR Combination with a unique histogram slicing mode to manually fight those pesky ghosts. The Advanced version allows extreme amounts of detail extratction by using frequency curves. Not the easiest to learn, but insanely powerful.

Mac, PC | Basic: Free, Advanced: $72 | active

50% OFF

Very streamlined interface, with RGB histogram and sliders right in the docked sidebar. One global and two local tonemappers, which are claimed to make photo-realistic and surreal results very easy. The best: student license is heavily discounted.

Mac, PC | $79, students: $29 | stalled

15% OFF

Nik Software's powerhouse for creative tonemapping. Control points allow locally targeted adjustments, which opens a whole new world of artistic control. Designed as plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge, but can be tricked to run standalone.

20% OFF

The small brother of HDR Expose. Runs on the same high-qualiity engine, but stripped down to the essential controls. Very easy to pick up, recommended for beginners, lightning fast and interactive. Delivers crisp and clean tonemapping results.

Mac, PC | $100 | active

15% OFF

HDRMAX comes in a very professional outfit and fits right in with Adobe's Creative Suite. Tonemapping is powerful, simple to use, and pretty halo-resistant. OpenEXR support is deeply missed, but it has powerful post adjustments and batch HDR generation.

The godfather of all HDR utilities. HDR Combination is very dated, and it does tone mapping only via Plugins. But it has a good amount of editing capabilites, that still make it the swiss army knife in HDR. Development on HDRShop has stalled, though.

PC | v1: Free, v2: $400, v3:$199 | stalled

30% OFF

Hydra has by far the flashiest interface, a 101% Mac-App. Tight integration with iPhoto, even comes with an Aperture plugin version included. Unique strength is the alignment feature, that will morph and warp each exposure into place based on control points.

Mac | $60 | active

25% OFF

HDR/tonemapper with excellent quality, great automatic ghost removal, and plenty of styling controls. Feedback is exceptionally fast. Included is a unique Relighting module, plus Image Stacking for noise removal. Not all modules support 32-bit, though.

pfsTools is the equivalent to PanoTools in the HDR world: a powerful suite of commandline utilities. And Luminance (formerly called QTpfsGui) is a user interface for pfsTools. Plenty of tonemappers for free, although not much interactive feedback.

Mac, PC, Linux | Free, Open Source | active

30% OFF

Photographic tonemapping / Exposure Fusion with enormous control over colors and highlights. Streamlined realtime interface, with a Series processing mode (like Batch processing, but pauses to let you adjust settings).

Paint Packages

Full package, including Thumbnail Browser and Album Generator and everything. Includes plenty of tone-mappers and can apply them all on the fly as display mapping. Really elaborate featureset, although not everything works reliably in HDR mode.

Formerly known as Film Gimp, and recently reborn as (and in) Glasgow. This one had a tough life already, ever since it split from the GIMP family to become a movie star. Features a very comprehensive color management system, and has a complete set of HDR painting tools.

Full 32-bit editing and painting capabilities since 2002, in the latest version 7 even with curve adjustments. Based on a unique workflow, where filters and adjustments are painted on. Includes direct HDR capturing from a tethered camera.

The king. Has gained quite some weight over the time. Since CS5 the HDR Layers and HDR paint tools are no longer exclusive to the Extended edition. Tonemapping is surprisingly crappy, but extendible via Plugins. Leader in stability and handling big files.

Mac, PC | Basic $699, Extended $999 | active

Panorama Software

15% OFF

Everything is automatic here, not even the exposure brackets have to be sorted. You just give it a folder and it spits out any pano it can stitch. Works often great, but sometimes makes funny choices. Supports Fisheye and plays well with 64-bit Windows.

Mac, PC, Linux | $146 | active

15% OFF

The super-deluxe version of Autopano. Has additional templating abilities for a more streamlined workflow. Also includes Autopano Tour for conveniently linking panos with hotspots and generating a professional virtual tour website.

Community-driven stitcher, that carries on the tradition of PanoTools in the Open Source domain. Can stitch HDR segments, supports fisheyes and a huge amount of fun pano projections. Soon to step up to a modern one-step workflow from LDR bracketed segments to HDR panorama.

Authoring utility for interactive web pano viewers and VR Tours. Also extremely useful as conversion utility between different panoramic formats. Includes a hand patch mode to fix the nadir and works great with OpenEXR images.

Leading PanoTools-Frontend, with reliable automatic control point creation and excellent manual tweakability. Fisheye support is a given, and it already sports HDR pano generation directly from the LDR exposure brackets. Even includes a Tonemapping module.

Mac, PC | $203 | active

Plugins

Open Source Tonemapping plugin for After Effects. Includes 9 common tonemapping methods, each parameter can be animated. Fairly slow but very powerful, especially when used in conjunction with After Effect’s excellent built-in color tools and masks.

Mac | free, open source, donations appreciated | active

15% OFF

Enhances OpenEXR support in Lightwave. With EXR Trader you export all your render buffers in a multi-layer OpenEXR. Supports every compression out there, and runs on unlimited renderfarm nodes. A must-have for production work and professional compositing.

Mac, PC | $60 | active

20% OFF

The ultimate filter for Photoshop. The power of Nodes allows the creation of any filter you can imagine. Community-driven effect library with tons of presets. Only Pro edition unlocks full 32-bit support, but rebates are given for sharing presets.

Converting panoramic projections couldn't be easier. Great for retouching HDR panos, and with 150 projection you'll have hours of fun warping and bending your image into crazy perspectives. Or how about printing a cutout globe?

Tonemapping plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro. Sports all the detail and tone controls you could wish for, and includes a special mode to postprocess HDR footage taken with a Canon5D and the MagicLantern firmware.

After Effects plugin for rendering rectangular (normal) views from a spherical panorama. Conveniently uses After Effect's built-in 3D camera, works in 32-bit mode, and integrates very seamlessly. CS6 has such Environment maps built in, but Horizon is still faster. (example).

Optional plugin issued by Adobe; enables proper Alpha channel support for EXR files in Photoshop. Instead of applying the Alpha channel as pixel transparency, it will load it as channels. Examples here, and an epic discussion about the problem here. This plugin is not needed in CS6.

Mac, PC | free | stalled

20% OFF

Enhances OpenEXR support in Photoshop. Layers, channels, all compression schemes. ProEXR is the perfect counterpart to EXR Trader, absolutely required for postprocessing 3d renders in Photoshop. ProEXR is so awesome, that the AE version is included in CS4!

Mac, PC | $95 | active

15% OFF

A very unique plugin, that allows using Gigapixel-sized images as texturemap in Lightwave. It works through some kind of tiled EXR image pyramid, which means the renderer only loads the image area it needs. I use it regularly for these crazy Zoom-In-From-Space-Shots.

An advanced curved motion blur filter, typically used in professional car photography and CGI. The Pro version may be pricey, but can also blur HDR images and spherical panos (very useful to get perfect reflections on CGI car models just right).